Governor Hochul: “Working with Carl Heastie and Andrea Stewart-Cousins, let’s put some money back in your pockets. For anyone with a child under the age of four, how does $1,000 extra every year sound to you? Children older, $500 per child for you. Covering the cost of school lunches and breakfast — isn’t it a pain to have to make the sandwiches every morning and you find out you’re out of peanut butter, what are you going to do? I’ve been there. We’re going to cover the cost of school lunches and breakfast — $1,600 a child, that’s money back in your pockets. The largest middle class rate tax cut in 70 years — more money for our middle class workers who are struggling so hard.”
Hochul: “I’m proud to be your Governor. I’ll keep making sure that we can find policies and decisions that are going to help lift you up and your families because that is my number one job: keeping you safe and making life in this State more affordable for all of you. I thank you for all you do; I’m grateful. Let’s give yourselves another round applause. Thank you, everybody.”
Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul rallied with leaders from Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 32BJ and UNITE HERE! Local 100 at LaGuardia airport to announce enhancements to the Healthy Terminals Act, which provides improved health care and leave benefits for workers at John F. Kennedy (JFK) International and LaGuardia airports.
Good morning, friends. I was told this is a rally to allow you to give thanks to me for making sure we got this done, to make sure that you have no more insecurity about healthcare, to know that you’re going to get the wages you need to support your families. But I’m going to turn this around because my friends, this is about you.
This event is about you. It’s about finally giving you the recognition. That you’ve been denied for such a long time, and I know a little bit about this because I spent a lot of time and I’m gonna see if this works. Does this work?
[…]
Well, I wanted to be able to come out and see all of you. Can we turn this up? Crank it up. I’ve got something to say — I want one that works. Okay.
This is not to thank me. It’s to thank all of you because you are the ones who make this place work. If you are not here, we would not be able to welcome millions of people here every single year. You make sure they get here safely. You transport them, you take care of the luggage, you feed them, you clean up. And you are the ones who make this happen in a profound way that I, as your Governor, am so proud of. You need to know that I see you. I hear you, I understand you.
And sometimes in life you have these jobs where you feel like you’re taken for granted. You’re just out there waking up early in the morning, working long days, leaving your kids good weather, incredible heat. You had to come out in the last few days. Sometimes it’s bitter cold out here. And you know what you think. No one’s thinking about you. You’re just doing your jobs. That is wrong because I understand how important you are.
So to 32BJ, I thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all you do. Let’s give yourselves a round of applause. UNITE HERE! Local 100 — I thank you, Jose Maldonado. Let’s hear a round of applause for Jose.
32.
[….]
I thought I could do that too.
But first of all, let’s talk about what leadership looks like. I mean, Manny and I have become very close. We talk about all kinds of things, our families, our challenges, our love of the working men and women of this state and his union. He just is so passionate about the work that you do, and I thank him for that because leadership does make a difference. And Jose Maldonado, we’ve worked a lot, very closely together. I want to thank you for standing up to fight for your members every single day.
You also have another fighter. You have another fighter, Carl Heastie, the Speaker of the entire New York State Assembly has joined us here today because he cares about you as well. Assemblymember Alicia Hyndman, I want to thank her for her service as well.
And fighting for all of you. Let me tell you something, I haven’t had a lot of glamorous jobs. I love being Governor, but I started out making pizza and chicken wings. Hey, I’m pretty good at it. Does anybody make food out there? Alright. How are your chicken wings? Real nice and hot and spicy. Alright, we’re going to have a chicken wing cookoff sometime. I used to make $1.75 an hour. Oh yeah, that was low. That was low and worked long hours all day long into the night. There’s just a couple of us. A lot of times you felt like you’re just doing all this and nobody cares. And sometimes someone would leave a tip on the table, maybe 25 cents.
Now that’s kind of insulting because it means they thought about it, right? And they still wouldn’t even give you a good sized tip. So I’ve come from that experience of working hard, kind of unsung, getting the job done every single day with me today, because I know that I’ll never take people like that or any of you for granted.
So, when we have an opportunity to say, you know what? These people work hard. They sacrifice. Why aren’t we paying them more? Because everything is going up.
We had the pandemic. You showed up during the pandemic. Everybody else is staying home nice and cushy, zooming into life, and you showed up to work, right? I will never forget what you did during that time. And also you come out of the pandemic — it’s going to be fine again, right? Everything’s good. What happens? We get slammed with inflation. No one counted on that. You’re working hard, you get a paycheck and the cost of everything is sucking more money out of your pocket.
So I’ve also worked hard, not just with the Healthy Terminals Act that you fought for and you won, making sure that you have health insurance that means something. But also, as I talked about in my State of the State address just a few months ago, I said, “Your family is my fight.” I am New York’s first Mom Governor — first Mom Grandmother too. Okay, there’s another one on the way. She’s due in two weeks, the baby is due. So if you don’t see me in two weeks, I’m holding a baby.
But I also said, “My family struggled.” My parents lived in a trailer park; Dad worked at the steel plant; Grandma had eight kids in a little tiny house. Immigrants, poor immigrants who came here in search of a better life — that’s my family’s story. We didn’t have a lot. We used to buy our clothes at the used clothing stores. We didn’t have that nice, fancy stuff — had to put our clothes on layaway. You could never walk out with the clothes you wanted to wear because you had to come back in a few more months when your mom could have paid for it.
I understand that to my core and I also know, as a mom, how expensive it is when you’ve got little kids, right? They don’t tell you that. Diapers, formula, they outgrow their clothes every three months — literally the clothes say zero to three, three to six — I’m not making this up, right? They just keep growing. The little sneakers, the backpacks you eventually need, right? You’re shaking your head. Yeah, you’ve got kids. How expensive are your kids?
[…]
Very expensive. Anybody else got kids out here? Okay, so we said working with Carl Heastie and Andrea Stewart-Cousins, let’s put some money back in your pockets. For anyone with a child under the age of four, how does $1,000 extra every year sound to you? Children older, $500 per child for you. Covering the cost of school lunches and breakfast — isn’t it a pain to have to make the sandwiches every morning and you find out you’re out of peanut butter, what are you going to do? I’ve been there. We’re going to cover the cost of school lunches and breakfast — $1,600 a child, that’s money back in your pockets. The largest middle class rate tax cut in 70 years — more money for our middle class workers who are struggling so hard.
And also, because I mentioned inflation, we collected more money in sales tax because everything costs more — think about that, we weren’t budgeting for that. For once we had a little bit of a windfall. I said, “Oh, this is nice.” Everybody’s saying, “Oh, spend it over here. Spend it over here.” I said, “No, you know who we’re going to spend it on? The people who gave us that extra money.” You — that came out of your pockets, right? So let’s put $400 back in your pockets and say that is your money.
So we’re going to continue fighting for you. You’ve got great union leadership. I’m going to make sure that we’re always going to have your back because you have had mine and I take nothing for granted in life.
And I’m going to make sure your family understands that affordability is not a new buzzword for me, it’s something I’ve lived with my whole life — understanding the people who struggle. And I’m looking at a lot of faces from around the world — I love the diversity of this place — and what’s happening to our immigrant families right now is sickening and I’ve called it out. And yes, we will help the administration in Washington get rid of all the bad criminals, and the murderers, and the rapists, and everybody said he was going to get rid of — are you okay with that? I’m okay with that.
Right, we have got to keep our communities safe. But there are so many families that are being separated right now: people following the rules, going into the courthouse with legal status, coming out with it, being taken away from them and now they’re criminals in the eyes of people in Washington. We have to stand up, my friends. Our values are under attack right now and you can count on me as the Governor of a vastly fascinating place full of people from around the world who just came here for a better life like my grandparents did.
So, I’m proud to be your Governor. I’ll keep making sure that we can find policies and decisions that are going to help lift you up and your families because that is my number one job: keeping you safe and making life in this State more affordable for all of you. I thank you for all you do; I’m grateful. Let’s give yourselves another round applause. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me bring up —
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Sí, se puede.
Five years of high school Spanish — yeah, it took me an extra year. Ladies and gentlemen, we are so forward to have someone who not just fights for you but delivers for you. Let me tell you one issue that Carl Heastie was so adamant about: the fact that if anyone gets laid off from their jobs or there’s a strike, you got paid poultry amount of money, about $500 a week.
Who can live on that? Carl Heastie said, “Governor, we have got to do something about this.” He says, “We have to be able to change what is going on right now with our unemployment insurance, take money from our State reserves and pay this off.” So, you know what? If you’re ever out of work, it’ll be $336 more a week, over $800 if you have to be on strike or you end up losing your job.
How does that sound to you? Ladies and gentlemen, give it up to Carl Heastie who fought for that. Ladies and gentlemen, our Speaker.
